


The Days of Our Lives

by Basingstoke



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M, Time doesn't work quite right in Schitt's Creek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22198948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke
Summary: Patrick is nearly asleep when he realizes: "How can it be the first Sunday of the month when it's July 8th?"
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 45
Kudos: 227





	The Days of Our Lives

Patrick is nearly asleep, thinking about wedding colors (he's going to suggest stone and denim blue and David is going to give him that look, that one that says he's too cute for words, and he's looking forward to it immensely) when he realizes: "How can it be the first Sunday of the month when it's July 8th?" 

"Hm?" David says into his shoulder. 

"Sorry. Just, it's July 8th today, but it's the first Sunday of the month. But July 1st was also a Sunday, we had a half day at the store and that's when we took our hike. Wasn't it?" 

"Canada Day," David murmurs.

"That doesn't--Canada Day doesn't change the days of the week. Wait, Cabaret opened on a Monday. And played for a week. But today is Sunday. How did you get an appointment to see the venue that fast, anyway?" He tries to check his phone, sure he's got something wrong here, but David is sleeping on his arm and he can't reach. 

Well, it's not like it matters. 

It does kind of bug him, though.

*

It's still bugging him when they get breakfast in the morning. He said the stone and blue thing to David while they were getting dressed and David gave him the exact look he knew he would and then kissed him; now he's on the Pantone site on his phone, pairing colors experimentally. Patrick is looking at his calendar. 

Cabaret opened on a Monday. And played for a week. So yesterday should have been a Tuesday, because it was the day after the wrap party. It doesn't quite make sense on his phone calendar, but he can't get it to go to full month view. 

And, oh, heck, David's birthday is coming up. He has something planned--it involves a song he wrote--and he needs to practice. They've been dating for two years, he thinks. Two years come David's birthday. 

Wait. What did he do for David's birthday last year? 

He doesn't remember what he did last year. 

Patrick starts to think he has a brain tumor. He would remember that. He would absolutely remember that. It's their first anniversary AND David's birthday, how can he not remember that? He remembers Christmas, the first one and the second. He remembers making hamantaschen for Purim and how much better he got at it the second time. It's been two years. 

He feels like he's been hit in the stomach with a lead-shot snowball. He can't... He doesn't... How does he not? 

What is he going to say to David? Should he call an ambulance right now? Is there any point? There's no point. Oh god. 

Twyla touches his arm. "Patrick? Can you come here for a second?" 

Patrick looks at David, but David is frowning at yellows. Patrick gets up wordlessly. 

Twyla takes his hand and leads him to the office. "Lie on the couch. You look like a ghost. Just lie down for a second." 

Patrick does. His hands are shaking, he realizes, and his heart is pounding, and his ears are ringing, and his lips are buzzing. Lying down is good.

"Okay, just breathe and get the oxygen going. In, out. In, out." She guides him until he's starting to feel just awful, instead of like he's going to have a heart attack. 

"Fuck," Patrick mutters, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. 

"What did you figure out?" 

"What?" 

"You figured out the time thing. What did you realize?" 

Patrick looks at her. Twyla is sitting in a desk chair next to him, looking sympathetic. "I...realized that I've been dating David for two years, almost two years, but I couldn't remember our first anniversary. It was both his birthday and our first anniversary, so I must have thrown him a party. Or at least a night in. But I can't remember it at all. I thought I had a brain tumor." 

"Ohhh." Twyla makes an "oops" face. "I guess that counts, though, as figuring out the time thing." She tilts her head. "Yeah. It counts. I thought you would work it out eventually with the business. The fiscal year never adds up." 

"Is this...something everyone knows?"

"It's something everyone could figure out but most people don't. Gwen knows. I think Ray knows but he hasn't said anything. Keith knows, but you don't have any interaction with him." 

Patrick shakes his head. "I don't know a Keith. Is he--wait. I know everyone in town, it's not a big town." 

Twyla nods. "You know everyone in your town. There's a lot of towns here, all balled together," she says, making a snowball gesture. "Keith is part of a different aspect of the town. All the towns have different people. They all eat at the diner, though." 

Patrick used to read a lot of urban fantasy, the kind of books with elves driving race cars and selkies in rock bands. He swallows and tries to remember how to deal with the Fae. "Is it bad to figure it out?" 

"No! No. It's confusing, but it's not bad. The town is so much bigger than us, it really doesn't matter." 

Patrick starts thinking of Lovecraft instead. "The town is....a person? Like an entity?" 

Twyla opens her mouth, inhales, and pauses. She tilts her head and tries again. "No? It's a place. It's definitely a place. But it's not a normal place like you think of places. It's not, like, a Newtonian physics kind of place." 

"A tesseract?" Patrick says. If this is going into a Wrinkle in Time place, he'll have to reread. 

"I don't know what that is. But the town isn't the important part. It's just the tool of what is really keeping us here. And that thing is so big I can't even comprehend it. None of us can. I think it's benevolent, though."

"How can you know that?" 

"Because I was dying when I came here in 1978," Twyla says. 

"Oh," Patrick says. 

"I had a tumor in my neck. I had surgery--here's the scar, see? But they couldn't take it all because it went into my spinal column above the place where I would be able to breathe. So they said sorry and told me to be happy for as long as I could. So I came home to Newville. Did you know that David doesn't think it's called Newville?" Twyla says. 

"What? I've heard him say it." 

Twyla shakes her head. "It's different for everyone. That's what I noticed and how I figured it out. David thinks it's called Schitt's Creek." 

"That's a terrible name." 

Twyla shrugs. "The town throws out lures to bring people in. And everyone is a little different so the lure is a little different. For the Roses and for you, the name of the town was the lure, but in different ways. You wanted to be new so you pulled off the highway here. They thought they were up shit creek so they landed here." 

"Jesus." 

"Ted thinks it's called Oak Creek. This is why his puns sometimes don't make sense to you. You probably didn't realize they were puns, actually."

"So time is meaningless here," Patrick says. 

"Pretty much. It passes, but, I don't know, it's like it passes more than once. Or it gets diced up so you only experience certain days. I'm not sure." 

"And something is keeping us here." 

"No! You can leave. I left and came back. So did Mutt. So is Ted right now. And some people leave forever, like Mutt's younger sisters. They both died outside the town so we forgot they existed." 

"What the fuck," Patrick says. "Something is...giving us the opportunity to live here? If we want? But making us confused so we don't know we're being kept?" 

"Yes!" Twyla says. "You've got it now!" 

"But what's keeping us?" He looks up without thinking. 

"I've never been able to comprehend it," Twyla says. "I don't think it's perceptible to humans." 

"Okay," Patrick says. 

"I also can't stop the food being so bad. I think it's part of the time recycling. I think the food is recycled somehow as well. Not in a gross way, just, like, the...taste is diced up. The food-ness of it. The effect goes away if you have food that was grown inside the town so I think it must be something in the boundary."

"Okay. Okay. Where's the boundary?" 

"Oh, I can show it to you! It's further than you think. Elm Creek is actually part of it, but the people aren't, which is weird? There's so much to discover, honestly. Maybe you can help me figure it out! I never went to college and I'm seriously lost with these higher concepts." 

"Okay." The panic is wearing off and he's getting hungry. "So. I have to tell David." 

"It's all right if you do. Think about it before you do, though, you know he's sensitive." 

"Yeah." 

"And he's really happy here," Twyla says. "He's so much happier than he was when he arrived. I think if he realizes, though, he'll want to leave, and then you guys will be back in the real world. It's not as easy out there." 

"It's not easy in here." 

"Isn't it?" Twyla says. "When you think about it?" 

Patrick inhales; he exhales, thinking about it. 

"But David has that bug about authenticity. Really, though, is it so bad if things are a little fake? If you don't have to grow old and die, but just...keep going like this? When I came home, I was thinking how much I missed being a small town girl in a community where everyone loved me. So I've been here for over forty years, here in the heart of the town. David wants to get married when he's 36," Twyla says. 

"What?" 

"He told me. He wants to get married when he's 36. It's one of those things he fixates on. You know how he is. But you're too sensible to propose until after you've dated for a while, and then it takes time to plan a wedding, so the town is trying to make your timelines match up. It doesn't do it very well. Like, it's really bad at it. So that's why it doesn't make sense. You think you've been dating for two years but a year hasn't fully passed, not really." 

"The town is making me think that our relationship has gone on for longer than it actually has?" 

"No. Yes and no. The time is being experienced but not passing," Twyla says. 

"Okay. That…" Patrick shakes his head. "I need to think about this. And we've been back here forever, David should be looking for me--" 

"We've been back here for two minutes. Your food is almost ready." 

Patrick looks at the clock. They've been back here for two minutes. 

"I'll bring out your breakfast," Twyla says. She helps him stand. 

Patrick returns to the table, where David is frowning at yellows. "Spring green is so tricky between morning and afternoon light," David says. 

"I thought we're doing stone and blue?" 

"Accent colors and foliage. A summer wedding means flowers are kind of tricky. Like, flowers are in spring, fruit is in fall, you know? Summer is for ripening, which is difficult to theme. You want sort of a…" David gestures, gold rings catching the light. "Feeling of plenty and promise without being heavy." 

Patrick catches his hand and kisses the back. "Exactly. It would ruin the wedding if the colors were too heavy." 

David rolls his eyes, but smiles. "You would know the difference if you were standing inside it. The genius is knowing what _will_ be good. Any dummy knows if something _is_ good." 

Twyla brings over breakfast. "French toast! Thanks for sourcing the maple syrup, David. It's so much better than the stuff we were getting before." She cuts her eyes slightly at Patrick. 

Patrick tastes the syrup. "Oh, god," he says. It's so good. It's so, so, so good. It's like his first time tasting real maple syrup, back when he was a kid. The French toast is amazing too. Local eggs, he thinks. Local milk. Local bread. Everything here is just a little better than the outside world. 

"Mmmm, yes, this is from that farm over in Elm Valley. They tap their own trees and boil it down in this gigantic kettle. Gigantic. You could boil an entire family in it." David takes a bite and closes his eyes, chewing happily. 

Patrick looks at Twyla. "Thanks," he says. 

*

**Author's Note:**

> I plan to update irregularly. If anyone else would like to use the concept, feel free. It makes the show make a LOT more sense.


End file.
